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d100 Interesting Outdoor Encounter Features

December 27, 2018

With the demise of Google+, hitherto harboring a great RPG community, many groups are trying to find a new home on the great old internet. A fair few are flocking to MeWe (you can find me there too), still others are clinging on to Google+ until its last breath. But gaming chat service Discord has also seen a huge uptake. One such new server is for DIY RPG Productions, which includes a channel entitled #gygaxian-democracy-d100s.

In this channel, one proposes a topic, and before you know it, an array of creative folks have assembled a hundred entries for it, ready to inject spice and variety into your game. Once 100 entries have been reached, someone proposes a new topic, with an entry or two, and the cycle restarts.

Recently, the topic “Interesting Outdoor Encounter Features,” was proposed by Luka Rejec, and for this I joined a host of contributers in rapidly creating a slew of weird and wonderful entries, from the frightening to the bizarre, the exciting to the baffling.

Although all the entries for all topics generated are currently being collected and saved in a document for posterity, I was moved to create a fancy PDF for this particular series, to distribute it to the wider gaming world. Dowload the d100 Interesting Outdoor Encounter Features here, or scroll down for just the text.

Top down view of the PDF. Touch to download.

d100 Spices

The grass is sharp as knives. Please wear shoes.

All the animals can talk. Though not many have anything interesting to say.

Every night, the animals polymorph into a slightly bigger but otherwise mundane animal.

The grass is sharp as knives and 1-2 meters tall. Please wear stilts.

Everything is blown glass.

The wind here likes to carry whispered words across many miles, while drowning shouts.

Here, the full moon has a face. You can ask it things, but it will give you the answers to the wrong questions.

Thick pollen coats everything, making tracking as easy as in snow. It also sticks to anyone who passes through, marking them, and occasionally causes sneezing attacks.

The silence is heavy and ponderous, like suffocating glue. A living creature that makes any noise takes a point of damage per sound or syllable.

Under every hollow, in every nook and cranny, goblins lurk.

The trees here grow in rows, straight as arrows, with identically placed branches. Damage to one is replicated to every other in a rippling wave, which reverses and sweeps back to the original tree, leaving no trace.

The Moon just died, so rocks are falling from the sky.

The pools, ponds, and mists of the area refract the light differently for each onlooker, and thus everyone sees them in different colors.

Every sound made becomes a living thing for a brief period of time, flitting hither and tither, always away from its source. The louder the sound, the bigger its animate form, the harsher the sound, the scarier its manifestation.

The geyser is actually a permanent reverse gravity spell over an underground river, flickering on and off. Watch out.

The forest is criss-crossed with near invisible silver strings, sharp as a guillotine. Were someone able to make sense of them and trace them to a source, they would arrive at the heart of the forest, where the members of a coven of witches take turns being enveloped in the strings, perfectly aware of anything that occurs within their bounds. At the remote ends, the strings pierce the ground, attached to slumbering wights. The witches yank them out of the ground to attack trespassers.

Softly glowing and pulsating bio-pods grow along the trunks of the trees. What is in them, and why are some so much bigger than others?

The people of the salt lakes ride giant gerridae, or water striders, from island to island.

The air is thick as water here.

The waters here have a strong sense of aesthetics, and refuse to flow down unattractive river beds, remain in ugly lakes, or be contained in poor quality cups.

The razor sharp grass has been mowed. When the wind picks up, the shards make it pretty hard to breathe.

A large dome fashioned of iron ribbons with a giant magnifying glass at the top. (It’s like a giant gazebo or open air temple.) On sunny days the glass focuses the light into a burning point, which slowly passes over the ground beneath the dome. A cult has adopted this place as their temple and conducts sacrifices here.

Fetid stinking marsh with weird fungal stepping “stones” on the water surface. They are like puff balls and can explosively rupture, infecting those near them with spores.

Hovering boulder. Can be pushed, and is quite nasty when it picks up speed.

Gravel beds filled with giant zombie leeches. The necrotized creatures are individually weak and about 50cm long each, but en masse they are deadly.

A hermit is constructing a city here, for nobody in particular. They get very upset if any of the (shoddy) buildings are damaged.

A fence of shark-like teeth and iron rails is capable of moving like a snake because it is haunted by an ancient ghost. The triangular teeth are 2-meters high and razor sharp. It abhors violence and will seek to enclose and isolate anyone who starts a fight. It will change its tactics if others attack the one enclosed. Its goal is to stop the fighting.

Sentient lode-stone, the size of a house, in the middle of a barren clearing, rusted bits of wreckage in a circle at its base like a fallen crown. Some of these bits are probably valuable. It can sense metal within the clearing, which is the limit of its range, and it can activate or deactivate its magnetism at will. It is a trickster, and greedy. Currently the magnetism is off.

Basalt cliffs terraced like a giant’s staircase. Mineral rich water oozes from the cracks and blooms with slippery algae.

A dead cedar—50 meters high, 3 around, and rooted firmly in granite—houses a multi-species flock of corvids with a hive mind, and a treasury of precious things. They are collectively capable of speech, mimicry, and throwing their voices. They like shiny things, and sowing chaos in humanoids. When two groups encounter one another in their realm, they will try to pit them against one another.

Quicksand dunes flow like ocean waves.

Dogflowers, hairy, howling, and biting, drip and drool everywhere.

Your shadow comes alive and goes on its own adventure in this area, returning some time later, or perhaps, not at all…

Cats here can talk, and they never lie.

Rain falls up, as do tears or any similar droplets.

The trees drop wet globes of overripe fruit when disturbed, attracting swarms of yellow-jackets and flies.

Gopher holes everywhere filled with poisonous snakes.

Sharp sounds may trigger an avalanche.

Many of those tree trunks are actually the legs of a herd of elephantine beasts camouflaged, sleeping, prone to stampedes.

Encounter is being scryed upon by ___.

Flowers release an intoxicating scent that acts like a love potion.

Vines sprout and grow rapidly in response to blood falling on the ground.

This location is enchanted, so that all birds are able to remember and reenact encounters witnessed in their lifetimes. They put on shows like actors in plays, instead of singing and chirping.

A gelatinous sphere (like a gelatinous cube) attempts to roll away from a giant, hungry dung beetle (immune to its effects). The beetle and the ball of goo are indiscriminate about what else they gather up.

Basalt column, 3 meters high, supporting a sundial. The gnomen is a beautiful woman turned to stone by ___.

Ruin open to the sky and encircled by columns of precariously balanced stones, some fallen.

A sacrifice zone filled with piles of offal dropped by cloud giants.

Pool of delusion grants wishes that are only real within its extents.

Invisible nets, sticky like spider webs left here and forgotten by a giant hunter.

A field of fallen tree trunks stacked upon one another in a jumble, with gaps inbetween, occasionally shifting under your weight.

Constant winds and a cult sculpted this volcanic outcrop over the years into a flute that makes a cacophony unless played by many persons. The cacophony drives people mad.

Caustic vapors fill a volcanic depression. Tangled mats of vegetation thrive on the vapors and float about on them like islands.

Crystal growths on the rocks gather light all day from the sun and glow at night. Breaking them off releases the energy like a fireball.

The trees, when awakened, enjoy tossing people around like balls in a game of catch.

A path of dead vegetation leads to a giant snail inside an invulnerable snail shell. It is currently too dry, and waiting for it to rain.

These ants get everywhere and itch worse than poison ivy.

All living things native to this area live and grow and die 10 times faster than outsiders, and are likewise not interested in them.

Two large boulders, 100 meters apart with identical 1 meter diameter holes in perfect alignment with one another, are portals into a shared, out of phase, space between them. Only one side of each hole, the outer face of each boulder, passes into the out of phase space. Anyone in the out of phase space can see and hear what is going on in the real space, but can not interact with it and is invisible to everyone in real space, unless seen through the hole in the boulder.

Apparently tilled earth ready for planting will actually swallow a person up to their waist if they stop walking, and hold them for harvest by ___.

Rusty metal cylinder like the bottom section of a dead rocket or a grain silo, just sitting here apparently forgotten, and serving as an unnatural seasonal pond or cistern, elevated 5 meters above the adjacent field. The phosphorous, rich bird shit is caked up at the bottom. It is just as hard to climb in, as it is to climb out.

Cowhide grows like an endless dermatic tumour on the ground, thickening and folding in and over itself. Leather miners come to the region, strip-cutting the top layers while fighting off giant ticks and predatory lice.

Everything around here is edible.

Pushing a specific knot on a specific tree reveals an underground lair used for some nefarious purpose.

All the weeds here are snakes, all the snakes have petrifying venom. Fortunately their fangs are not very long or sturdy.

All the trees are chained to the ground. If you unchain one, it floats away.

Everything around here is poison (ingestion or injection).

Some of the hills are artificial and flimsy, and will collapse if you push them hard enough. The river is blue. Not reflecting the sky-blue. It’s blue when you put it in a glass.

Ghost fiddler, if you don’t make a save you can’t stop dancing. Otherwise harmless.

Acidic soil under layer of rubbery grass. Acid earthworms of bovine proportions erupt from the soil when it rains.

There’s a small pond and some underbrush and some trees. It’s calm. Maybe a little too calm.

The hill is a gargantuan plastic pancreas covered in dirt and trees. It’s quite confusing.

A dense carpet of tall, fleshy but sturdy tendrils, each 10 to 20 cm in diameter. Walking across them is a balancing act, but woe to those who slip between them. Who knows how deep it goes and what lives on the carpet floor. Rumors: 1) dire lice, 2) mites, 3) two-dimensional angry aliens, 4) glue slimes.

When you step on the moss, a low grunt is heard in the distance. It gets progressively angrier the more the moss is trampled on, and there’s like moss everywhere. Uh oh.

Almost every other tree has a small animal tied to its trunk with twine. The cadavers are all tied upside down, and they’ve been drained of blood.

The clear, greenish lake is only a few feet deep, and its floor is all marble. Large, colorful lily pads cover much of it, home to warring pixie cults. A single massive, marble statue of a human queen lies toppled in the middle.

A slow moving herd of oxen-like beasts as far as the eye can see. A whole village has been built across their backs, with bridges and towers, ever moving where the herd goes.

Looks like an ordinary forest. 2m below the topsoil, sea water. Straight down. Sterile, as far as you can tell. There’s nothing alive down there… at least, nothing you’ve seen.

A lush, verdant forest in the hills. But you’re 3 cm tall in comparison.

No the grass isn’t moving, those are land-eels, and for them it’s mating season all the time.

This immaculate patio is paved in 1 meter square stones, each weighing half the weight of a person. Beneath the stones are very deep shafts to a refuse pit. They magically, and at random, phase out if anything substantial rests on them for more than a second, dropping what is on top into the shaft.

Landmines.

A herd of headless sheep with exceptionally puffy wool is loose and wanders through the encounter like a pack of blind cotton balls.

A savage tribe of halflings who use dagger grass as weapons. They spend most of their lives on stilts, as do their abodes. As well as elaborate masks, their warriors wear skirts of dagger grass, which they use to bloody effect in their derwish-like battle dances.

The rain hurts. Copper pieces fall from the sky. A pack of beggars appears. They have been chasing this rain cloud for days. Some are starving.

An immortal, invulnerable, and mostly ineffectual bureaucrat appears with red tape and attempts to tie up all participants of the encounter with it, citing some infraction or other.

The pine trees of this forest drop needles like lawn darts.

Invisible squirrels cause mischief.

Plant life spontaneously combusts to reproduce.

Rose fog bank causes drunkenness.

The roads and trails in this area deliberately mislead, changing course, branching into dead-ends, and looping back upon themselves.

Flash floods.

Flash flood of poisonous, tiny frogs.

Lonely bramble of roses eager to snare passersby, and the current encounter is entangled in it.

Dark willow hides everything under it in shadow.

The location is marked with an “X” made by flower petals arranged obsessively by the encountered creature.